It used to be that if one dragged a file/document from a folder or Desktop to another folder and held it over the latter folder until same highlighted, it would also open that folder so that one could place it where one wanted in the contents of the folder. Moreover, that procedure could be successively repeated if the folder contained other/embedded folders.

This no longer seems to be possible. I cannot find any preference setting which might allow this action (which was a default or SOP in OS 9).

Am I missing something?

Mac OS X 10.7 Help: Set spring-loaded folders

Thanks.
Given my apparent misunderstanding of spring-loaded folders in another thread, I had neglected to re-check that option in Finder's Preferences.

Whenever I have upgraded the OS, I have made it a point to go through ALL preference options in Finder and System Preferences. That way, I get to see everything that is available and also become familiar with how these things are organized (they sometimes change from one OS to another). Perhaps you have already done so, but if not, I urge you to spend some time at this task.

Absolutely. I've done so on several occasions*, the first upon turning on the iMac, before installing any third-party applications, etc.

*Setting and re-setting depending on whether I've liked the results of my choices.

Very good strategy. Not only for customizing but also for understanding what options one can use and which can vary from old OS version to new OS version.

Note that if you leave spring-loaded folders disabled, it can still be manually activated when needed by pressing the spacebar. I generally prefer this mode so I don't accidentally trigger the spring-loaded folders when I don't want to.

I thought this problem had been resolved (beyond my ken how).
But it isn't.
Create a folder; put on Desktop.
Create a document or cut-and-paste an article or download a .eml document; then put in folder.
Drag item back to Desktop, which then sees it snap to upper left corner of screen; do with more items from folder, and they stack up in upper left corner of screen.
Drag one or all to another spot on Desktop and they stay where they're dropped.
Put back in folder and then drag and drop onto Desktop and they now stay where they're dropped.
Ergo: First time back out of folder to Desktop and SNAP; successive times out, normal behavior.
This occurs in my user account and in test account; therefore a system-wide issue.
Apple support has never heard of this behavior and has not been able to offer a solution.
Reminder: This behavior occurred 10.7.1 and now in 10.7.2.

I'm not sure exactly how/where this is set in Lion, but that shouldn't be too hard to figure. You might want to check what is set in the Finder's Arrange by pull down menu found (so far) at the bottom of the View>Show View Options window?
- If it's not None, try that and see if the behavior changes.
- If it doesn't change, or if the menu's already set to None, try changing it to something else and than back to None, testing the Finder behavior after every change.

If that doesn't help or if this particular Finder setting cannot be found, please post back here and we'll try to come up with something else.

Been down all those roads and then some.
Nothing seems to work.
And the senior Apple advisor I spent 1.5 hours with on the telephone this morning couldn't come up with anything either (except take me through some fantastic voyages, setting up root access accounts and stuff which quite frankly scares the hell out me — and I can't figure out how to get rid of the Other account set up in some invisible fashion).
This should be a trivial problem, but it sure isn't.

OK, let's deal with that invisible account later, and focus on the Finder's foibles for now. Having jumped there from Mac OS 9 in one fell swoop you may not have realized this, but Lion's Finder options to arrange files in various views have been extended compared to previous OS X versions. Your problem may be related to one of these options, and it would therefore be useful to be aware of them. They are described in How to arrange and sort files in Lion Finder.

The solutions offered in the following link may or may not apply, but it's worth a shot: how to stop lion re-arranging my desktop upon startup. Btw, do all Finder windows behave the same way? It would be interesting to know if this includes windows with different default settings like Icon/List/Column etc.

I was on the phone for another hour with a senior Apple advisor, again to no avail (but we got the Root User account removed).

He couldn't replicate the problem on his machines; the only solution he could suggest was to reinstall the OS and go from there — of course necessitating my purchase of an external drive to use with Time Machine (so half again as much as I paid for the iMac). I'm certainly not interested in major surgery for a tiny paper cut.
If this problem has no reasonable solution, then I guess I'll just have to put up with the inconvenience — but it's pretty shabby of Apple not to be able to deal with such a trivial problem. (And people wonder why I prefer OS 9.)

As I noted, I've been down all those roads. I've examined all varieties of file arrangements/views which are offered; so I am intimately aware of them. (After trying for over 5 minutes to access that first MacWorld article, it still wouldn't show up. Another 10 minutes and all that showed up was a page header. [There must be way too many graphics in the article; that's what usually slows down the process from all I can tell.] So I gave up.)

All folder views (icon/list/column) give the same result: New documents removed from the folder snap to upper left corner of the screen.

When grelber first posted this issue I suggested that it might be .DS_Store file related, but now he's reported that it follows him to a test user account.

Do you know whether .DS_Store files are account specific or systemic?

It's a bug.
We can't fix that.
End of discussion.

[seriously, there is a similar issue when first opening a window after login (its size and location isn't right under certain conditions.... close and reopen, and it's back where it should be). OSX isn't perfect... but it's so much better than OS9 in so many ways, that no amount of whining can change that.]

.DS_Store files are folder specific. Each folder gets one, and they are used for that folder no matter which user is logged in. A problem in a .DS_Store file would persist for any user, so it's not impossible that's the problem.

After spending hours on the phone with Apple (at so-called senior advisor level) I get the same impression.


I thought that issue had been fixed with 10.7.2 update.
And whining at least releases a bit of the pent-up tension and frustration.

If so, is there a reasonable fix for this? (By which I mean, as usual, one that I might be able to implement with buggering up my machine and without having a nervous breakdown.)
I might add that folders I brought over from my old system don't share this bizarre behavior; ie, newly created documents placed inside do not snap to upper left corner upon being taken out for the first time.
The same seems to hold true for folders created on the new iMAC which have been around for a couple weeks (which makes the problem even more interesting ~ complex).

I don't know the root of the problem is, but I can list some things that it isn't.

First, it isn't SOP. I've never seen that problem, neither on my machine, nor mentioned in any forum I read, except in this thread.

The fist time you drag something to the desktop, it goes to one place, but the second and later times it goes somewhere else. Ergo, it's not anything to do with your View Options.

Each folder has its own .DS_Store file. Each user has their own Desktop folder, with its own .DS_Store file. A new user would have a new folder and a new file, both uncorrupted and with correct permissions. If the problem occurs as described with a new user, it's not a .DS_Store issue.

On MacOS, there was a separate invisible Desktop folder on each disk volume, and Finder merged their contents on the fly to put all their icons on the desktop. That caused numerous problems, some of which are similar to the ones described. (You could not easily tell which volume an item on the desktop was actually on. If you dragged it to a folder, even a folder on the desktop, you were implicitly dragging it to whatever volume that folder was on. If that meant it was going to a different volume, you got a copy. Otherwise, you got a move.) But OS X doesn't handle the desktop that way. Instead, each user gets a prominently visible Desktop folder right at the top of their home folder, and whatever's in that folder is what they see on the desktop. There's no longer any merging of folders from different volumes. Besides, if I understand your complaint about being asked to buy an external disk for backup, you don't have any other disk volumes anyway. So that's not it.

Notice that I'm scrupulously distinguishing between "Desktop", with a capital "D", and "desktop" with a lower-case "d". "Desktop" is a folder, not much different from any other folder. "desktop" is the area on your screen behind all your windows. The connection between them is that they contain the same items. Whatever you put in one appears in both.

"Desktop", like any other folder, can be viewed in Finder through a window. In fact, you can open any number of windows into the same folder, and they'll all show the same items. (Use ⌘^O to "Open in New Window". Or just use ⌘N repeatedly to get several windows, then navigate each of them to the desired folder.) MacOS couldn't do that, because it failed to distinguish between a folder and a window into that folder.

Each window can be put into one of four "views" (List View, Icon View, Column View, or Cover Flow View). Notice that view is an attribute of a window, not a folder. Each of these views has its own independent "View Options". The desktop itself can be thought of as yet another window, differing from other windows in that it always looks into the Desktop folder, and is always in a fifth view (Desktop View), which naturally has its View Options as well. (The five views don't have completely independent options. Desktop and Column view do, but there's a lot of crosstalk between List and Coverflow, and both of those share Arrange/Sort by... with Icon view.)

When I look at the View Options for Desktop View, there is no "Arrange by ..." option. (This is one of the differences between Desktop View and the very similar Icon View.) Try as I might, I cannot find any option that makes new icons appear in the upper LEFT of the desktop. If "Sort by..." is set to anything but "none", icons arrange themselves starting from the upper RIGHT.

If I open a window on the Desktop folder, and put that window in Icon View, and set Icon View's View Options to "none"/"none", then new items appear in the first available position in that window starting from the upper LEFT. Is that maybe what you're seeing? Do you have a window open into the Desktop while you're doing your tests? The Desktop and desktop are using different views, and while they're displaying the same items they will generally display them differently. But that doesn't get the icons stacked up on top of each other, so I guess that's not it either.


BTW: You really do need that external drive for Time Machine. They're cheap nowadays. You can get gobs of disk space for under $100. Without backup, you will someday lose all your data, including the irreplaceable stuff.

Thanks for the thorough exposé, some of which I can follow.


It just doesn't go somewhere else the next time, it stays where I put it.


OK, I guess that means we're back to square one?!


I really don't know what this all means (at least pragmatically).


That's not what I'm seeing. The item (icon of the document) snaps to the upper left corner and only about 1/4 quarter of it is visible, just below the menu bar.


The Apple Time Machine external drive is $500 here.
I don't know anything about external drives other than the flash/thumb drives I've been using. I wouldn't know good from bad from ugly.
I looked at the Time Machine application which came with my iMac and I understand absolutely nothing about it.
My backups have been solely content-oriented, by which I mean I save my documents on a CD from time to time (but my Toast Titanium won't work here), so I imagine — if I can ever figure out how the CD/DVD burner on this machine works — that I might be able to use that.
I'm waiting for David Pogue's book on Lion for instructions I can understand; if he doesn't have them, then I'm screwed in that regard.

You can delete .DS_Store files with OnyX. Get version 2.4.1; the next one is still in beta. After installing and launching OnyX, select the Maintenance tab and then click Rebuild (that's where to go for the Snow Leopard version but I assume that the Lion version is the same). After doing this, the folder positions will revert to defaults but you can re-arrange them to your satisfaction. That re-arrangement should stick.

You should consider shopping at Apple Canada on-line and buy refurbished. Aside from the fact that the items aren't technology from five minutes ago, they are close to buying new - including warranty - just a lot cheaper.

Further, the stuff just arrives at your door and is often free delivery.

I've bought a few things that way and have never been sorry.

ryck

Update: If that was true, it isn't anymore. Documents put in old(er) and imported folders exhibit the same behavior — first time move from Desktop to folder and then removal back to Desktop yields the same snapping behavior (and subsequent normal behavior).

Thanks for the pointers, but:
(1) I've learned that any assumption that 10.7.x and earlier versions of OS X have completely similar behaviors is not a good position to take and certainly not to implement.
(2) At the best of times I'm wary about third-party applications which could do something nasty to my OS/computer and would need iron-clad guarantees that they wouldn't.
(3) I have extreme reluctance (due to my major insecurities derived from recent experience) to do anything with or to my machine that I don't understand (at least in broad strokes).

I bought my iMac via the so-called Canadian Apple Store (located in Rancho Cordoba, CA).
I didn't notice any second-hand deals online. But I likely wouldn't go that route because I don't like buying second-hand anything, since whenever I have, it's wound up costing me more than new because of hidden defects and their ilk).
Since I don't know anything about external drives (as noted earlier) and until I do no purchase will happen.
And Apple's policy is that only purchases over $75 get free delivery.

That must be for the Time Capsule, which is overkill for an iMac. You don't need that. Any external drive will do. Firewire is better than USB, but USB will do. Get one with about twice the capacity as the data you expect to have on your drive. (If you've got a 1TB internal drive, with 200MB on it which might grow to 250MB, you should look for at least 500MB. By the time you outgrow that, 20TB drives will sell for pennies.)


It's really easy. You plug in the drive, and TM will ask "Can I use it?" You click on "Yes", and you're using it.


Sounds good enough in theory, but believe me, in practice it's woefully inadequate. If you're doing it manually, you aren't backing up.

Time Capsule: I must have misread the box.
I can't understand your comments about external drive size (measured in MB).
I've got a 500GB internal drive and info tells me that I'm using 23GB of that. Given that my personal files constitute less than 3GB (including 1GB of music, which I don't really care about), that's 20GB of god-knows-what.



Then I totally misunderstand what it means to back up my stuff. I've only ever wanted to save my personal files — which is what I've done.
What is the point of saving any of the rest of it? I can't make a bootable disk out of it (from all that I've read in the Forums), so that'd be a waste of time and space. And what would be the point of copying all that stuff over and over?
(In the event of a total crash, there would be nothing I could manage anyway, other than to take the machine to the recycling depot.)

I can certainly relate to your reluctance to use third-party applications and make modifications. I felt that way when I started in OS 9 and I wouldn't even update Apple software! Still, if you want to solve your problem, you'll have to take action of some sort.

OnyX has been around for a long time and is a very reliable maintenance app. Deleting .DS_Store files is harmless but you should be prepared for the resumption of default settings on file and folder positions. They will regenerate as fresh, virgin files when you re-arrange your desktop. It is akin to deleting preference files in that you will have to reset preferences but then you'll have brand new preference files that store your preferences.

Bottom line: If you are afraid to try anything, even those things that are benign, you'll never get anywhere.

Another interesting feature/failure of my iMac and/or 10.7.2: The last Apple advisor I spoke with wanted me to do a Safe Boot (ostensibly to see if third-party applications could be interfering with the OS); it wouldn't do a Safe Boot (ie, no label identifying Safe Boot came up upon login, even though an unusual progress bar showed up beneath the Apple logo and spinning wheel during restart).

In a dozen years of using my iMac DV SE running OS 9 I never had a problem — no data loss, no crashes, no malfunctions. The only issues I experienced were/are not being able to gain access to certain websites (due to change in websites) and even then my old system could find what was on a "blank" page merely by cutting and pasting "All" onto a Word document.

Given this description of events, your Mac may actually have booted into Safe Mode despite the lack of label to that effect. Check out the Apple Discussions thread I don't think Mac OS X Lion is entering Safe Boot mode where behavior is seen similar to your iMac's.

It is interesting to note that several KB articles about Safe Mode do not specifically mention Lion, but imply that they refer to it as well (see Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? and Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode).

Good info in the discussion group and other articles. Thanks.
I tried looking into Console log for SAFE BOOT around the time we supposedly did it; I can't find anything which remotely resembles that — certainly nothing of the sort "SAFE BOOT DETECTED" as described in the discussion group.
CORRECTION: I didn't go back far enough. I did find:
11-10-24 4:21:16.000 kernel: SAFE BOOT DETECTED - only valid OSBundleRequired kexts will be loaded.

As an aside, I see hundreds of entries of the following sort:
11-10-24 6:52:26.202 Firewall: Stealth Mode connection attempt to UDP 200.205.145.22:54216 from 209.115.142.132:53.
That's rather scary. What's that all about? Nefarious types trying to attack my computer?

This type of language is normal and nothing to be worried about. For some explanation, see the Apple Discussion thread Am I being hacked?? HAVE I been hacked?

PS, if you have more questions about this, we'd better set this up as a separate thread.

(Grelber you are going to love this — NOT )

Yes but.. Not every folder gets a .DS_Store file. A DS_Store file is only created when the view for a particular folder or the location of the window on the desktop is modified. This is further confused by the view that is seen is inherited from the view in the highest level folder that is opened. For example if you open say the /User folder in column view and drill down to /User/youraccount/Library/Preferences everything will be displayed in column view set for the /User folder — even if the lower level folders have their own .DS_Store files and are set to open in another view. The same is true of List view and Cover Flow view. Icon view is the exception to this rule. In icon view each folder that is opened as you drill down through folder levels will be displayed according to the view setting in its unique .DS_Store file or lacking a .DS_Store file your default view setting. I suspect the reason Apple made the icon view an exception was to preserve some resemblance to the OS 9 behavior. This top down .DS_Store effect or the default effect that may be causing the behavior you are seeing with folders imported from OS 9.

Whether this helps your understanding of what is going on or adds further confusion, I don't know. Personally I long ago settled on Column view for everything which always presents a consistent viewpoint.

Jon has already mentioned OnyX, but TinkerTool System and Cocktail will also delete either individual .DS_Store files or optionally drill down through an entire folder hierarchy to delete all the included .DS_Store files.

A good example of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
That discussion thread was thoroughly explanatory (but still scary). Merci.

To ease your mind, it is both confusing and otherwise.

I have noticed that rather weird behavior, namely of opening a folder and having it display in a manner not of my choosing, over and over again. I set it in icon view, mutz around with other files, sometimes in list, sometimes in column view, and go back to the first folder to find it in some other view.
Very annoying, to say the least.

Apple should have built a simple solution into OS X to deal with this issue (rather than requiring users to seek out third-party applications to do the job — which job shouldn't have to be done in the first place).

Short of futzing about with deleting .DS_Store files (with all the attendant mystery [to my mind]), I guess the best way to deal with the issue is to grin and bear it — although what I'd like to bare to Apple is something entirely different.

Again, it's passing curious that Apple advisors, both frontline and senior, seem to be totally unaware of the issue in light of your elegant description of same.

Did you make sure to checkmark the "Always open in _____ view" box, for each of those folders in which you always want that particular view? That feature should work fine in Lion and Snowy (tho Leopard was a bad cat with respect to that feature).

I would if I could, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do so (at least not in Lion).
Selecting a folder and checking info: No choice.
Selecting a folder and checking view options: No choice.
Creating new folder and checking view options: No choice.
I've been through everything which seems relevant, but no option to always open a folder in X view presents itself.
Is there some place else I should look?

EDIT: I just found something similar. Opening a folder and selecting the little "gear" menu beneath the folder's title provides a different Show View Options, which when selected comes up with a modified info panel, the top item of which is a checkbox "Always open in icon view". That's close to what you were suggesting. Back to my last question: Is there some place else I should look (to find your options)?

Extremely so.


I don't have Lion, so i can't say if Apple has moved that option, or where to. Seems like you've found it though. [in Leopard/Snowy the place was 'View' menu --> Show View Options ⌘J' ]


hmm, there seem to be 8 mentions of ' View Options' back on page one.

That's so. In View menu that's what shows up — but it doesn't offer there the option I found under the "gear" in an opened folder window and there's no option of choosing any other "always" view, as you were suggesting.
So I guess that's the only option now available (and cleverly disguised/hidden it is).
I'm going to have to make it a habit of examining those little "gear" drop-down menus (or whatever they're called) whenever they show up; they've provided a ton of additional choices which are extremely worthwhile (eg, the cut-and-paste "gear" which changes any format to straight text with a single click).

The only application that creates, reads, or updates a .DS_Store file is Finder. Finder stores all sorts of information in the .DS_Store file, creating it when it has something to store. View settings are only a part of what Finder stores there.

Finder will create a .DS_Store file in a folder if:

• You view the non-empty folder in Icon view (so it can save the icon positions of the items).
• Any item in the folder has a Spotlight comment (so it can save the comment).
• Any item in the folder has a preview (so it can cache the preview).
• You change the view settings of any sub-folder (so it can save the sub-folder's view settings). Note that merely changing the view of a window does not necessarily change the view settings for the folder it's viewing.
• You change the view settings, icon position, or Spotlight comment of the folder itself, and the .DS_Store file for the parent folder cannot be modified. (The .DS_Store file inside a folder will substitute for the .DS_Store file of the folder's parent, but only if needed.)

The creation/updating of the .DS_Store file may be postponed until Finder quits normally, which usually happens at logout. It will be postponed forever if Finder cannot create/update the .DS_Store file.

That's because of the distinction I went to great lengths to explain earlier, between "the desktop" and the "Desktop" folder. "The desktop" is the area on your screen not hidden by windows, and is always in Desktop View. If you look at View Options for "the desktop", you won't see an "Always open in ..." menu, because it's always open and always in Desktop View.

On the other hand, if you open a window into any folder, even if it's the "Desktop" folder, View Options will show an "Always Open in ..." option, offering the window's current view. You will never be offered the option to "Always open in desktop view", because the current view of a window into a folder will never be Desktop View. Only "the desktop" is ever in Desktop View.

I must be missing something obvious.
I've never wanted or tried to open anything in "Desktop view".
So I can't understand why this would be an issue and/or how it would apply to anything I'm concerned about.

Do you ever use your computer? Is Finder ever running? Is there a desktop on your screen? (Hint: the answer to all three questions is YES.)

Then you've opened something in Desktop View. Specifically, every time you log in, Finder launches automatically, and Finder automatically draws your desktop, always drawing it in Desktop View.

The reason this is important to you is that you were complaining that when you use the "Show View Options" menu, the dialog that appears does not have an "Always open in ..." line, despite several people telling you it should be there.

The reason you're not seeing it is that you're looking at the View Options for your desktop, which is ALWAYS in Desktop View. The View Options for Desktop View does not have such a line, because for the desktop there is no choice of view.

If you bring any other "Finder window" (by which I mean any window that Finder uses to show you your files) to the front by clicking on it, the View Options dialog will update, to show a checkbox for "Always open in xxx view", where xxx is whatever view that window is currently in. If you click back on your desktop (or close all your Finder windows), the "Always open in ..." checkbox will disappear, because the View Options window will again be showing you the options relevant to Desktop View.

I'm explaining all of this so you will understand what you're seeing on your screen and why it seems to be different from what you've been told you'll see. When you see one of my posts that doesn't seem to relate to your problem, read it again. Read it as many times as it takes to make sense of it, because everything I tell you is related to some issue you've reported having. It really bugs me when I take the time to explain something to you, you dismiss it with "that doesn't have anything to do with me", and then ask the exact same question I just answered.

I am perhaps the only guilty party who raised the “Always open in ___ view” spectre, but in my defense it was because the topic had drifted off the desktop momentarily, when grelber mentioned this:


Since i don't have Lion, i can't dispute his belief that the Action menu (gear icon) and the main menubar are offering different View options... but somehow the confusion seems contagious.

First off, I apologize for my wording; no offense intended.

Second, the issue has gotten derailed because I was (mis)interpreting "Always open in xxx view" to mean that there was a list of choices for xxx, which I see now (after having just "played" with different folder view settings), of course, there isn't; as you said, the choice is always given for the folder view which presents itself.

Knowing that, all the stars come into alignment (ie, it is easy to deal with the issue). Indeed, I was missing something obvious. So many thanks.

This item is being moved (as requested) to a new thread under Peripherals.


Just before my copy of Pogue's book arrives, I've been scoping out various external hard drives.
There seem to be a whole host available, mostly USB (including USB 3), all of which need to be reformatted for Leopard and Snow Leopard (meaning that nothing is going to be formatted for Lion — and I wouldn't have a clue how to do any of that anyway).
I have yet to find a Firewire drive.

In any event, what exactly would be necessary to make use of this Time Machine function in my iMac? What frequency of backup might be warranted? And what might I use such backups for (since a crash of the iMac can't ostensibly be corrected by a backup, at least as far as I can comprehend the discussion in that thread).

In light of the foregoing, what brand names and models do FTM folk recommend? I'd like to keep the price reasonable, preferably (well) under a hundred bucks.

New thread, please.

PS: It's generally considered impolite to edit a post after it's been replied to. If you choose to ignore that, please at least keep the "Mark as Edited" box checked so that my post isn't left without any context.

No slight intended (in previous post removals).
When requested to start a new thread, I thought that it was de rigueuror at least appropriate to remove the 'offending' post and that the administrator would then remove the request to do so. I stand corrected.

All of a sudden, I started seeing this problem on my machine. This is good, for four reasons:

• It proves that it's not some mysterious non-reproducible gremlin on greiber's machine. It's an honest-to-goodness Finder bug.
• It means I could play with it, moving/deleting preference files and .DS_Store files to see what exactly were the bounds of the problem.
• I could file a bug report with Apple, so now they know about it, too. Officially. (Radar #10482554.)
• I can supply a workaround.

The steps I gave them to reproduce are:

The workarounds all center around step 4. Don't drag to an icon on the desktop. Put the icon elsewhere (like, on the dock), or drag to the folder's window.

E x a c t l y !
Every point you made is precisely my experience. Thanks for examining it in such detail and reporting it to Apple.
(As I noted in a post subsequent to the one you quoted, the senior Apple advisor I spent 1.5 hours with on the telephone couldn't come up with anything either, although the frontline advisor found the same thing on his machine, which is why he enlisted the help of the senior advisor — equally to no avail, I'm assuming.)
As and when (if) Apple addresses the Finder glitch, do provide a followup here.